Wormhole2:
Tool Routes Audio Over Networks, Now Open Source
19th
December 2007

Wormhole2 is a powerful, cross-platform (Windows + Mac)
VST plug-in capable of transmitting audio between
computers over networks. It allows effects chain routing
between networked computers, boasts low-latency
performance on LANs, and even works over WiFi or
Firewire. But Wormhole2’s niche audience kept it from
catching on more widely, and we hadn’t heard much from
it lately, leaving some users worried Wormhole had
fallen into a black hole.

plasq, the wonderful people who brought
us Skitch and Comic Life, have been giving their audio
tools new lives rather than orphaning them. We’ve
already seen plasq’s live performance-savvy instrument
and effects host Rax show up as
an
Audiofile Engineering product,
and AE in turn recently promised in comments that great
things were coming for Rax.

End users can just download AU (Mac) and
VST (Windows) binaries, plus a PDF manual. It’s even a
Universal Binary for Intel Macs.

Developers: because VST isn’t an
open-source format, you have to download Steinberg’s VST
SDK to use it, but plasq will actually go the trouble of
sending you the files once you agree to Steinberg’s
license agreement. (AU isn’t either, but Apple ships all
the developer tools you need with the OS.)

I’m really hopeful someone will build
something cool with this. You’ll need something else to
route MIDI (though the Mac does that over networks out
of the box, cough, Windows). But there are powerful
audio-over-network options here which would be hard to
work out on your own. It’s unclear how useful Wormhole2
will be to the existing, open source
JACK audio project, which is also
capable of routing audio between apps and (via
netjack)
networked computers. JACK uses a client/server model as
opposed to Wormhole’s plug-in approach. But for end
users, having both tools available free is a very good
thing, and the price tag is an extra incentive to be
brave and see if these tools can help power up your rig.